The herder's tongue
This is the new page for the conlang Ayeyarokth, I wish to give it a neater and more easy to use layout. This is so we can have a more enjoyable exprience with it. Once I finish this page I will be deleting the old ayeyarokth page. Classification and Dialects Ayeyarokth is a religious language for faith I started a couple of years back which has been my religion throughout my life. It is a language used for prayer and for which the holy books shall be written in, its prime function is to write the holy mysteries. It is more of a personal conlang, I intend only myself and any new converts and also my children and their children to use this language but I am happy to share it. Phonology The phonology is fairly complex and it has a very large phonology, it uses click consonants but not as much as !xoo but it has more non click consonants than !xoo. The consonants use Bilabial, Dental, Retroflex, Palatal, Velar, Uvular, pharyngeal, epiglottal and glottal. It utilises nasals, plosives,fricatives, affricatives, approximants, flaps ,lateral trills, lateral fricatives, lateral affricatives. It also uses large number of labialised and non plumonic consonants. One thing to note is that ayeyarokth's retroflex flap is never pronounced as a tap ever, it is a non-rhotic flap but it is still written as r̋. The vowels have only central and back as well as close, mid close, mid, open-mid and open. The vowels have fairly consistent rounded and unrounded. Vowels can be pronounced what ever length people wish to say them as. There are normal, creaky, rhotic and nasal vowels. There are no diphthongs or triphthongs so dqq̓aioiüǩ (hammer abs) is in ipa /dqχʼä. ɨɔɨ. ɯx/ the vowels are pronounced separately Consonants Vowels Tonal system The herder's tongue uses tones to distinguish different word classes such as adjectives, nouns and verbs. This done further by distinguishing different verbs, nouns and adjectives from each other. For example the root word ǩer has everything to do with death and killing, it needs tones to distinguish the noun form, the adjective form and the verbal form. The noun form is split into the more active noun and the less active noun, these are killer/deather and dead/corpse, The adjective is split into the more active and less active, deadly and dead whilst the verb is split into killing and diying. Tone is generall omitted from the native writing system or the romanisation called Ayeromað tends place a number after the vowel/consonant to show its tone however it is quite ugly so it is often omitted. Phonotactics There are no proper phonological constraints in the language it allows words such as kǩlhw' (emperor). which contains no vowels. the language allows a wide string of consonant clusters which can be CCCCV CCCCCCV etc. It also allows simple CV VC and also CCC clusters as well. in its long compound sentances the stress and the break up of syllables can be very random. Writing System The language uses three writing systems a logographic ones for lexical words (proper nouns, native names, verbs and adjectives) whilst for grammatical words such as affixes it uses a featural system. The third system is a romanisation which is used for when something needs to be written landscape. The roman system uses lots of diatrics due to the herder's tongue having far more sounds in it than the majority of language's which use the latin alphabet e.g english, german and of course latin. Grammar Nouns The nouns are fairly interesting for they declined according to case, gender, heirachy and number which are shown through suffixes. The language uses a wide range of pronouns which have both active and inactive forms which both decline to gender. The cases are fairly straightfoward and simple however they must either be voiced or unvoiced depending on the previous consonant. Each gender agrees to the heirachy. Cases The herder's tongue has fourteen cases. cases agree to nothing so are fairly simple and straightfoward, they are also always suffixes. Nouns can have multiple cases, morphosnytatic case must always come last but all cases must before the noun's gender. The language uses ergative and absloutive cases however as it is fluid-s they might as well just be called dynamic and stative. The language uses a fairly simplistic directional case since direction is also marked on the verbs. The language uses range of different relationship cases as well. Number There are only two numbers in Ayeyarokth, single and plural. This is shown from gemination/vowel length, for example ok' man and ok'k' men. This process is used for the end morpheme of a word so in nations is, ḍameȷȷ with the locative's ending vocied palatal fricative is geminated. Noun gender and rank The herder's tongue uses five genders these are: God and spirits, male humans, female humans,animals and inscets, plants and others. There are then these ranks. Superior, unsure superior, formal equal, informal equal, formal unequal and informal equal. Some genders do not mix with other ranks for example Gods and spirits can never be lower than unsure superior. Rank is only marked on the agent on a transitive sentance. Rank effects sentance order, this is a mark of politeness. Pronouns There are various pronouns, each pronouns have an active or a stative form. The pronouns also are marked for gender and come in these forms first person singular, first person plural inclusive, first person plural exclusive, second person singular, second person plural, third person singular and third person plural. The pronouns generally attach to the verbs in transitive or intransitive sentances. The interrogrative pronouns are also marked on noun class as well depending upon the noun class of the ablsoutive noun Verbs The verbs are complex as the herder's tongue is polysnythetic, it involves heavy noun incorporations this includes agent nouns. verbs show tenses, aspect and mood. The tense/asepct is shown through an infix and the mood is shown from changing the intial consonant. Tenses and aspect There are several tenses and several aspects in the herder's tongue. The tense and aspect is conjoined and is also shown in a verb as an infix after the intial consonant for example kill in present aorist tense would be ǩhiler whilst kill in unknown future aorist tense would be ǩñn'er. Directions The language marks on an infix before the tense infix which shows the direction in which the verb goes. This means that waterful is called a watering down. mood The verbal mood is shown through modifying the intial consonant in a certain way, if a verb does not start with a consonant then it will start with the plosive equilvant consonant of the intial consonant of the tense marker infix. Syntax Lexicon Calendar Days A day is split between the dark hours (oxurryn) in which the sun is down and the light hours (oxtelan) in which the sun is up. There is no fixed number of light or dark hours in the day. A day is in the time the sun is up is different to a full 24 hour day (Tegx) There are seven days in a week. The days are just called first day(Tegxot) , second day (tegxod), third day (tegxog), fourth day (tegxoq), fifth day (tegxots), sixth day (tegxotl) and seventh day (tegxolh). a Week is around seven weeks. Months Calendar is lunisolar so months are based on the lunar months whilst years are based on solar years. Months have around 29.5 days. There are twelve standard lunar months with an additional thirteenth intercalary month used to synchronise the twelve lunar cycles with the longest solar year. These thirteenth months are named after the thirteen mortal heroes of Yargostii scriptures, each of them has their own monthly festival which ties into their tasks and to the agricultural or pastoral event of the current month. These are Urdok's month, Telanok's month, Urriok's month, Hashok's month, ;a'o's month,Auok's month, ǩaǩaǩaok', Ogok', ğařalakǩok's month, Tuuğok's month. muřuok's month Pfwacok's month Qaklotlok's month. Qaklotlok's month is a leap month since the solar year is elven days longer than 12 lunar months. This month is only ever added on the third, sixth, eighth, eleventh, fourteen, seventheenth and the nineteenth years of a metonic cycle. Years Years are solar years which are based on the time it takes for the Earth to go around the sun. This takes around 365 days and thus either 12 to 13 months depending on the year. on the last day of the last lunar month and then carries onto the first day of the first lunar month of the next year. This typically happens on Pfwacok's month although during leap months it happens onn Qakltotlok's month. The system is based on the metonic cycle of 19 years, 12 years are normal years of 12 months and seven are leap years of 13 months. To calculate whether or not a year was leap year one must take the year and divide it by 19 and find the remainder. Category:Languages